Upon power up or determining that a measurement trigger is received or met, a user equipment (UE), such as a mobile device, a station, a mobile station, a mobile, a terminal, a user, a subscriber, and so on, passively scans nearby transmit-receive points (TRPs), such as base station, access point, NodeB, evolved NodeB (eNB), gNodeBs (gNBs), master NodeB (MeNB) or master gNBs (MgNBs), secondary NodeB (SeNB) or secondary gNBs (SgNBs), and so on, for information or to make measurements. The scanning process is very costly in terms of power consumption and may lead to service interruptions.
In high frequency (HF) communications systems, such as communications systems that use frequencies greater than 6 GHz, including millimeter wave (mmWave) communications systems, beamforming is used at both the UE and the TRP to overcome link budget shortage due to high attenuation loss. DL scanning when beamforming is used usually takes more time and effort because the communications beams (transmission beams and reception beams) have to be aligned in order for UE and the TRP(s) to communicate. Furthermore, due to the smaller coverage areas of the HF TRPs (due to the high attenuation loss), frequent location changes due to the mobility of the UE, intermittent HF links between the TRP(s) and the UE, and so on, the DL scanning may occur more frequently, leading to greater power consumption, more service interruptions, and degraded performance.